Guo Peiji: The Fundamental Guidelines for Enhancing National Cultural Soft Power in the New Era
Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, as the cultural chapter of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, profoundly elucidates the significance of enhancing national cultural soft power. It clarifies the visions and concepts for such enhancement and designs an action path for this purpose, providing the fundamental guidance [1] for enhancing national cultural soft power on the new journey in the New Era. It must be profoundly studied, understood, and comprehensively implemented.
The Significant Meaning of Enhancing National Cultural Soft Power
Xi Jinping Thought on Culture systematically discusses the strategic significance of enhancing national cultural soft power. This serves as the value orientation for advancing the construction of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics in the New Era, creating a new form of human advancement, and enhancing national cultural soft power; it must be profoundly understood.
Cultural soft power occupies a core position within the comprehensive national strength. Cultural strength is developed on the foundation of hard power, such as economic aggregate, military armaments, and technological products, while simultaneously exerting a counter-action upon these forms of hard power. On one hand, culture is the soul of a nation. "The strength of a country or a nation is always supported by cultural prosperity." The cultural environment—formed through the fusion of principles and policies, rules and regulations, social customs, and especially the spiritual temperament [2] forged by a nation over a long period—not only profoundly influences the forward development of society but also indirectly affects the development of hard power. History and practice have proven that only ideological and spiritual attraction and cohesion are intrinsic, powerful, and enduring. On the other hand, the development of hard power is, in essence, realized through people. Whether the individuals developing hard power possess the scientific spirit and cultural literacy required for social development typically affects the actual effectiveness of that hard power. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that what embodies the core and highest level of a country's comprehensive strength is cultural soft power, which concerns the cohesion of a nation's "vigor, qi, and spirit" [3]. The power of culture can become the "booster" of economic development, the "navigation light" of political civilization, and the "adhesive" of social harmony.
Cultural soft power plays a strategic role in the process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The fate of literature and art is intertwined with the fate of the country; the cultural lineage is linked to the national lineage. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that improving national cultural soft power is related to the realization of the "Two Centenary Goals" and the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The rise of a great power is not only a development process of hard power, such as economic aggregate, military armaments, and technological products, but also a process of developing soft power, such as ideological and moral quality, national cohesion, and cultural influence. We must persist in the coordinated development of hard power and soft power. Throughout the history of human development, those countries that maintained long-term prosperity and stability not only created a powerful material civilization but often also created a spiritual civilization that led the era. Under the international situation where the world's profound changes unseen in a century are accelerating, to grasp the initiative in competition, we must enhance cultural soft power. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Improving national cultural soft power not only concerns our country's positioning in the global cultural landscape but also concerns our country's international status and international influence."
The Core Content of Enhancing National Cultural Soft Power
Xi Jinping Thought on Culture conducts deep reflection on the content of cultural soft power and puts forward a series of new ideas, new viewpoints, and new judgments, greatly expanding the breadth and depth of public communication, ideology, and cultural work in the New Era. It enriches Marxist cultural theory and provides theoretical principles and an action guide for enhancing national cultural soft power.
Accelerating the construction of a Chinese discourse system is the decisive prerequisite for enhancing national cultural soft power. Discourse is used to express meaning, but once it is used to construct identity and make people follow voluntarily or obey under pressure, discourse possesses the power to influence others. Enhancing national cultural soft power ultimately aims to enable the recipients of communication to understand the culture being disseminated. This requires expressing cultural concepts through a certain discourse. Therefore, we must construct a Chinese discourse system, "using discourse that the masses can understand and accept, so that the Party's innovative theories can 'fly into the homes of ordinary people' [4]." We must create new concepts, new categories, and new expressions that integrate Chinese and foreign elements, master the dominance of discourse, and fully transform our country's developmental advantages and comprehensive strength into discourse advantages, better communicating the Chinese path, the Chinese spirit, and the Chinese image.
Accelerating the construction of a Chinese narrative system is a strategic task for enhancing national cultural soft power. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "We have the ability to do Chinese things well; do we not yet have the ability to tell the China story well? We should have this confidence!" Storytelling is the best way for international communication; it can trigger people's reflection, move the audience, and produce resonance. We must adopt the communication concept of "convincing people with reason, moving people with emotion, putting ourselves first [5], and integrating Chinese and foreign elements." We should "focus on shaping cognition, communicating with public opinion, and winning people's hearts," objectively and truthfully telling the story of China's development. We must embed the Chinese path, Chinese theory, Chinese system, Chinese spirit, and Chinese power into various wonderful and concise story carriers to better disseminate Chinese cultural concepts.
Strengthening international communication capacity building is an important means of enhancing national cultural soft power. "If we are backward, we will be beaten; if we are poor, we will starve; if we are voiceless, we will be scolded." To expand the influence of Chinese culture and enhance national cultural soft power, we must break the long-standing situation where Western countries monopolize international communication advantages. We must change the situation of "having the truth but being unable to speak it" or "speaking it but being unable to spread it," and continuously optimize the interpretation skills and communication intensity of our country's cultural and value concepts. We must strengthen top-level design and research layout, master the laws of international communication, and—facing communication groups in different regions and countries—targetedly adopt corresponding communication methods. We must promote the globalized, regionalized, and segmented expression of Chinese stories and China's voice, striving to build world-class communication media to provide platform support for communicating Chinese stories and China's voice.
Being brave to struggle and good at struggle is a basic principle for enhancing national cultural soft power. The Great Struggle with many new historical features includes both the struggle of hard power and the contest of soft power. Currently, the ideological struggle between major powers is becoming increasingly fierce, showing signs of becoming concealed, white-hot, and deep-seated; the confrontation and struggle in international public opinion are also becoming more sharp and complex. We must inherit and carry forward the spirit of struggle in the cultural field, dare to struggle against reactionary propaganda forces, carry out targeted and effective public opinion struggles, and actively and proactively disseminate China's voice.
The Practical Requirements for Enhancing National Cultural Soft Power
Xi Jinping Thought on Culture has a clear logic, a reasonable structure, and rich content. The Party's understanding of the laws governing the construction of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics has reached a new height, providing specific path choices for enhancing national cultural soft power.
Strengthen theoretical and academic research to consolidate the theoretical foundation for enhancing national cultural soft power. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The foundation supporting the discourse system is the system of philosophy and social sciences. Without our own system of philosophy and social sciences, there is no right to speak." To enhance national cultural soft power, we need to persist in the "Two Combinations" [6], grasp the organic unity of firm political stance and innovative scientific exploration, and strengthen research in philosophy and social sciences. We must clarify from an ideological and theoretical perspective major issues such as comprehensively advancing the building of a strong country and the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese-path modernization. We must conduct systematic and academic research and interpretation of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, using profound academic logic to explain why the Communist Party of China is capable, why Marxism works, and why socialism with Chinese characteristics is good, promoting the Party's innovative theories to become more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Improve the systems and mechanisms for cultural construction and communication to provide institutional safeguards for enhancing national cultural soft power. We must attach great importance to the fact that ideology concerns the flag, the path, and national political security. We must refine the responsibility system for ideological work and continuously improve the mechanism for guiding public opinion and the collaborative mechanism for responding to public sentiment. We must resolutely resist money worship, hedonism, extreme individualism, and historical nihilism [7], cultivate and practice the socialist core values, and promote the normalization and institutionalization of education on ideals and convictions. We must optimize the supply mechanisms for cultural services and cultural products to stimulate cultural creative vitality. We must make good use of science and technology to achieve the digital empowerment and information transformation of cultural construction, exploring effective mechanisms for the integration of culture and technology. We must manage network security well and improve long-term mechanisms for the governance of the cyber ecosystem. We must promote the restructuring of the international communication landscape, deepen the reform and innovation of the international communication mechanisms of mainstream media, and construct a more effective international communication system.
Advance the building of a cultural talent workforce to lay an organizational foundation for enhancing national cultural soft power. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that on the new journey in the New Era, we must profoundly grasp the demands of Chinese-path modernization for education, technology, and talent. We must strengthen the supporting role of education for technology and talent, further creating a vivid situation where talents emerge in large numbers, everyone makes the most of their talents, and talents are fully utilized. Education, technology, and talent are the foundational and strategic supports for Chinese-path modernization. To enhance national cultural soft power, we must focus on cultivating cultural talent, create a favorable development environment, stimulate the vitality of talent, and pool developmental strength. We must drive cultural innovation through talent cultivation and build a high-quality cultural talent workforce capable of creating masterpieces that survive the test of time, producing excellent cultural products that the masses love to see and hear, and promoting the Chinese path, Chinese concepts, and Chinese propositions to the world.